The Concorde Agreement

The Concorde agreement is the charter by which Formula One is governed. The agreement is between the sport�s governing body (the FIA) on one side and the participating teams (represented by FOCA) on the other. It is called the Concorde agreement because it was conceived at the FIA�s Paris headquarters in the Place de la Concorde.
Think of the Concorde agreement as the Geneva Convention which covers terms of conflict during wartime. And think of Formula One as a permanent civil and international war. The teams fight each other at every level and, in doing so, occasionally fight the governing body too. Teams accept the fact that they need to be governed because they�re too self-interested and competitive to govern the sport themselves. But that doesn�t mean they have to like it.